McDonald’s has an advertising history of emotive family stories. Those stories were made up. Now, they have entered the AI age and real families get to own them. TBWA\NEBOKO and TBWA\Helsinki NEXT have dreamed up a new kind of McDonald’s family story, Magic Stories. Housed within the McDonald’s smartphone app, every visit, drive-thru, and delivery produces a unique AI-generated animated story starring the families themselves.
The experience is embedded within the McDonald’s app. Each time a family visits McDonald’s or uses Family Mode, they unlock a new “magic item”, a virtual collectible that adds narrative twists to their story. Over time, the stories become magical memory lanes that families can revisit again and again, and a loyalty mechanism that fuses entertainment, technology, and emotion.
“The insight behind it all was that there’s always a story behind each McDonald’s visit — whether it’s celebrating after a soccer game, getting together for a birthday, or just picking up takeout for a cozy night in. Everyone who eats at McDonald’s carries these stories, and that becomes your personal mythology with the brand. We wanted to bring that to life. The idea was to build a personal, ever-evolving customer story — where each visit or interaction unlocks a new chapter in your family’s epic. Literally making brand storytelling personal for the first time ever,” said Mikko Pietilä, regional CCXO of NEXT at TBWA.
The app uses AI to craft stories that feel uniquely personal and magical, blending user interaction with advanced algorithms and generative visuals, giving families a fun way to connect. The campaign aims to break out of the hyper-competitive box of fast food advertising, deepening the brand’s connection with families in a way that has never been thought of before.
“McDonald’s has always been part of family moments – it’s in our DNA. No family is the same, and with Magic Stories, we can build a more personal connection with each of them in a novel way by using AI and by making them the main characters,” stated Malou Buné, marketing manager digital at McDonald’s Netherlands.
The technical execution was led by TBWA’s innovation practice NEXT, through its Helsinki unit. The AI architecture behind Magic Stories was designed to reshape how brands tell stories. By combining large language models with custom-trained image generators, the platform creates magical, personalised stories whenever families enjoy McDonald’s.
“We had many technical elements running side by side — and on top of each other — so it was essential to ensure that every puzzle piece fit together perfectly,” stated Umberto Onza, design director, GenAI at TBWA\Helsinki.
Because the project goes far beyond a typical brand experience, its foundation had to be strong, spanning legal compliance, creative direction, and technical implementation, to ensure the system runs autonomously and delivers reliable, high-quality stories every time.
“From the beginning, we knew we were building something more meaningful and enduring than a traditional campaign. That’s why it was important to bring in specialists across creative, tech, and legal from day one,” Onza added.
